School Badge Maker: How To Make Personalised Badges

Name badges, visitor badges, prefect badges and reward badges are great for primary schools or secondary schools. From rewarding students to identifying visitors, there are many positives that come from giving someone a badge to wear, so of course customising your own designs for a pin button badge seems like a fantastic idea!

Investing in a badge machine is a top class way to make pin button badges for your school or classroom but many printing companies now offer to make badges for you - so what’s the best option? Take a read of this guide to making personalised badges to help you make the right decision.

Buying a badge maker vs. ordering badges from a printing company

Established printing companies are first class when it comes to really professional looking designs and if you’ve got a specific layout in mind many companies let you create the design or upload your own through their website.

Most places will only deal with bulk orders, so this option is ideal if you need hundreds (if not thousands) of badges, but you’ll need the money and time to spare as it can be expensive, never mind P&P costs or waiting for the delivery to arrive.

A badge maker takes your paper designs and turns them into a ready to wear, pin button badge.

Anyone trying to keep costs down should think about purchasing a badge making kit as an investment the whole school can benefit from for years to come, not just to make a few hundred badges as a one off. Buying the machine and any occasional replenishment of blank badges is going to be a cheaper and easier option, forget twiddling your thumbs waiting for that order of badges, because you can just get out the badge cutter and badge press to start making as little or as many badges as you want.

Badge makers put schools in full control of the design element, whether drawings, pictures or works of art made on computer programs. Once you get the hang of it, everything takes a matter of seconds and there’s no need to spend any money on buying fancy papers or specialist inks. Standard printer paper and inks are affordable and easy to get hold of in your classroom.

Think about purchasing a badge making kit as an investment the whole school can benefit from...

What Is A School Badge Making Machine?

A badge maker takes your paper designs and turns them into a ready to wear, pin button badge. It’s a really easy two stage process that involves using the badge cutter to trim your design to the perfect circle shape, before using the badge press to push that paper on to the badge back.

With completely manual operation across both machines, all you have to do is pull the handles down - there’s not even one little bit of electricity involved, so it makes the whole process easier and faster! Rumour has it that a talented bunch of badge making champions have been known to make about 200 badges in an hour – think you could beat them? Buy your own badge making bundle.

Whatever kind of badge you want to conjure up, first you’ve gotta know exactly how this whole thing works…

Hands up, who knows how to make a pin button badge? Well even if you’ve got an Olympic medal in badge making, listen up!

The Badge Making Process

Step 1: Designing your own school badges from scratch

First things first, all you’ll need is a pen and paper or if you’re feeling arty why not create a design on the computer. Just make sure the entire design will fit on the badge, you don’t want any part of your master piece getting cropped off.

Draw something cool or print out the idea – it doesn’t matter how simple or extravagant it is, as long as you use standard printer or photocopy paper (about 80 to 100gsm).

Step 2: Cutting out the perfect badge shaped circle

Use the badge cutter to trim your design to the perfect size for pressing, so there’s no need for any scissors. Just slide the paper into the top of the cutter and align your design with the circle shape on the front. Pull the handle down and out pops your perfectly circular circle, ready to be made into a pin button badge.

Step 3: Pressing designs onto pin button badges

Pressing is where all the magic happens - literally magic before your very eyes. The simple two step process secures your design onto the metal badge front and covers it with a smooth laminate surface, before pushing everything onto the pin button back… and just like that the badge is now ready to wear!

Students could even create their own drawings and designs to be turned into a badge.

All our badge bundles come with blank badges so you can start making badges as soon as you receive the order, which could be as early as tomorrow with our free next working day delivery to mainland UK (excluding Scottish Highlands).